Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§10.1 Through the Gospels to Jesus
identity and rationale. Such performances would have flexibility in detail and
combination of elements and emphasis, but the main distinguishing features
would have been constant, and core/key elements (usually involving words of Jesus)
would have been relatively fixed. Both characteristics are still clearly evident
in the Synoptic tradition. This finding probably applies only to the first fifty
years or so, since John and subsequent Gospels show increasing 'editorial' freedom
in what may be drawn from such episodes and teachings of Jesus' mission.
On the basis of these findings we can be more confident than the formcritical
heritage has usually allowed in our assessments of what 'goes back to Jesus'.
I emphasize again that I do not envisage 'getting back to Jesus' himself. All
we have are the impressions which Jesus made, the remembered Jesus. Where my
emphasis differs from that of other questers at this point is (1) my claim that we
can get back to the earliest impact made by Jesus, made by events and teachings
preserved in the Jesus tradition. This is because (2) the impact translated itself into
community tradition from the first; the tradition not only bears witness to the impact
made by Jesus but is itself part of the effect Jesus had on those he called to
discipleship. And (3) the oral character of the traditioning (transmission) process
means that in and through the performative variations of the tradition still evident
in the Synoptic tradition we are still able to hear the stories first told about Jesus
and the teachings of Jesus which first drew the tradents into discipleship and sustained
the churches in the early years of their common life of discipleship. Where
we find consistent features across a range of the performed tradition, then, we
may conclude that they derive from the most formative influence on the tradition
— that is, most likely, not from any one of the many performers of the tradition
but from the creative impact of Jesus, as embodied in the tradition shared by and
definitive for the communities which celebrated the tradition.
This will not prevent our recognition that in the retelling/performance of
the tradition it was regularly given a fresh slant, that in the different versions we
can see how the tradition was taken in different directions and often elaborated.
The question will be whether that elaboration is consistent with the originating
impulse, whether the elaboration clarifies an ambiguity or makes specific what
was left unspecific, and so on. The implication of §8.2 is that jarring inconsistencies
were unlikely to have been introduced or, if preferred by teacher or prophet,
to have been accepted. But that implication will need to be further tested in what
follows.
It will be characteristic of the examination of the Jesus tradition which follows,
then, that the evidence is laid out synoptically for readers to see for themselves
its character, both its diversities and its stabilities. Too many treatments of
Jesus comment on pericopes without quoting them, or quote only one or another
version. Details of variations have to be spelt out verbally, sometimes in mindnumbing
detail. Since my earliest days in teaching, however, I have found that
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